Category: Random Musings

Oh my goodness! It’s finally here and you have no idea how happy I am that my personal website is here. Many thanks to Aaron Pratt, my tough love branding consultant who built this site as well as my beloved http://www.theatrebeyondbroadway.com site.

Over the last 6 months, I have been exploring my love of the arts and how it feeds my soul. My friends tease me by saying I’m as slasher: “Malini is a director/producer/publicist/actress/poet/cat lover”. It’s funny. I really just love exploring all the possibilities that the arts have to offer. I don’t direct as much anymore though I am directing a mock trial. I don’t act as much anymore though I was in the Rough Draft Play Festival. I write poetry when the words overcome me and someone asks me to read my work.

I do, however, love promoting theatre. This isn’t a new side of me. I’ve been doing since I’ve been doing shows (which is coming up on two decades). I remember in college that I just wanted people to see the show. My first show at Baruch College was Twelfth Night. I was one of the servants in Olivia’s house and worked with Maria. I had NO lines. Yet, I invited everyone to come see the show.

So what’s really happened is I’ve become more specific. The other facets are there when I am ready.

Anyway, it’s great to be back. Malinism will have more tabs. In the meantime, thank you for being awesome. And break free!

Oh: one more slash: Presenter on Salon Radio. Tune in Monday night at 9pm at www.cityworldradio.com.

Thank you goes a very long way. Michael Roderick wrote an excellent post on his blog about saying thank you. Believe it or not, many people do not say thank you. Did I belabor the point?

This recently happened to me. I connected two people, both of whom I knew well, and I wasn’t acknowledged for it. I am thrilled that they will be working together as I knew it would be a good fit. However, I found out about it in a roundabout way. And it kind of hurt. Then I got stuck in my head and was wondering if I was making it all about me. Ian had to talk me down. Then I realized, a simple note saying hey Malini, much thanks, would have been the most professional thing to do. Anyway, here’s Michael’s post as he really nails it.

Also, Josh Rivedal’s The Gospel According to Josh: A 28-Year Gentile Bar Mitzvah, is available on pre-release. Click HERE for more info! And click on my video below as I give my Tony Award Nominated Thank You Speech!

I’m sure to many folks this seems like the simplest of statements, but I am amazed every day at how easy it seems to be for people to forget about it.

A perfect example: Yesterday I get an email from an organization that I am a part of forwarding an email from some one who I introduced to the organization. I took time out to find this person during another event, tell him about the event the other organization was hosting and in fact, bring him to that event. At the end I also took the time to introduce this individual to someone at the event who could be helpful to that person’s producing career.

So guess what the email was about? It was thanking the organization for introducing him to that individual who he has worked with on numerous occasions. No mention of me taking the time out of my schedule to help connect him. Kind of makes you not want to do that kind of introduction again doesn’t it?

There’s a big lesson in here today for producers at all levels:

Look carefully at who helped you get where you are today. If you haven’t thanked them, take the time to do so today. If you’ve gotten donations even if they were smaller than you hoped for, say thank you. If you were invited to a party that you might not have been able to go to had it not been for a certain person, say thank you and finally, if you have volunteers who are working for you for free, say thank you.

The more people feel appreciated, the more likely they’ll help you in the future and as much as it sucks, the opposite is also true.

So look through that address book today. Is there anyone you forgot to thank?

Let the whole world see it. Thank them here in the comments below. Use fake names if you want, but let them know you thanked them. That is what keeps the relationships going in this business.

I’ll start:

Dear Readers,

Thank you for subscribing to my blog and being willing to get my posts in your email daily, thank you for re-tweeting the posts that you enjoy, and thank you for your insightful comments. You all are the reason I keep writing this blog and the reason that I have gotten more readers and become better known over the time this blog has started and I am grateful for that. Thanks also to those who get my info by Rss feed or some other method that is not email. The fact that you still find a way to read and respond to my posts is greatly appreciated. You all are the reason I write this and keep writing it and your support means the world to me.

Sincerely,

Mike

There. Now your turn:

Excelsior!

I know I have been a bit silent in the blogosphere  and I am sure everyone was just sitting at their computer awaiting my post to pop up in their in box, appear on their FB newsfeed, and following #whereMalinibe?

So much has been going on. It has been a whirlwind since the readings of Imaginary and my short vacay in Myrtle Beach.

Thank you for being so wonderfully awesome and supportive. I need to say it as I type it so you can then read it and absorb it.

Now here’s a run down of everything:

IMAGINARY

The reading was super successful. Nick and I met with a film exec who would like us to work on the screenplay version of the play. So, Nick and I are exploring that avenue.

THEATRE BEYOND BROADWAY

TBB celebrates it’s one year anniversary next month. The newsletter is still going strong and has now grown into my PR/Marketing Firm. My current clients are Naked In Alaska  and See Jane Give Up Dick in this summer’s FringeNYC. The TBB website is currently being constructed so stay tuned for more info.

ESTROGENIUS

The EstroGenius Festival is celebrating it’s 14th year. Black Henna is super excited to be in collaboration with them this fall…

BLACK HENNA

…as we are producing the world premiere of Manny Liyes’ Runo Rimac.  The play revolves around zombie, Runo, a hulking, savage mass (found in the Lost and Found at the Waldorf-Astoria) who’s only purpose in life is to feed on human flesh to survive. But Dickie, our down and out actor, reaches Runo and they in turn see something salvageable in each other. Dickie “raises” him and gives him a knowledge of the world, ultimately making life more challenging for our zombie.

KEW GARDENS

I know. You’re like what about your neighborhood, Malini? Well, yours truly has contributed to an upcoming book on the ‘hood. Ian and I will have our building ,which was built post-World War I as part of the garden apartment houses plan of the early 1900s, in the book. Pictures and captions. This has been a 15 year labor of love that has finally come to almost completion. As you can imagine, it’s pretty exciting.

So, that’s what’s been happening.  And scene.

Dawn and I were really moved by Girl Be Heard’s performance of 9MM America.  I’m really proud to stand by her side on the issue of gun reform. Here’s her official review of 9MM America:

As a gun reform advocate and theatre practitioner I was excited to attend a performance of 9mm America, a play running now in New York City that sheds light on America’s gun culture. Written by Girl Be Heard, a group of young women between the ages of 14-23, the play is unique in its perspective. Many of the girls in the cast come from neighborhoods where gun violence is prevalent and some of them are survivors of gun violence, having lost family members to gunfire.  It is clear that their experience with tragedy has empowered them with a sense of responsibility to change something wrong with this country. And what is wrong, they tell us, is that “Gun violence is an addiction and America, you’re an addict…”

The actors take us through the violent history of guns in America from the genocide of Native Americans, through slavery and the civil war, to the sensationalism of guns through our media coverage – a destructive influence that has led to a growing sense of paranoia and the belief that a gun is needed to keep us safe from “all those other people who don’t look like me.” It is this paranoia and fear of “other” that perpetuates the vicious cycle of violence in the neighborhoods these young women call home. In their view, police assume every person of color they see is up to no good, and those same people of color assume the protection of the law does not apply to them. Having worked in prison, I’ve seen the consequences of this unfortunate dynamic. Young black and Hispanic men have taken the law into their own hands and ended up in jail, all because they didn’t feel there was anyone else who would help them.

Also discussed in the play is the way in which the design of our economic and educational systems seems to keep minorities from succeeding. Poverty and lack of proper education have led desperate men and women to turn to other means of survival like drug dealing, theft, and other types of crime – in most instances using a gun for power and protection. Add teen pregnancy to the mix and the cycle just repeats itself over and over again, each new generation learning at a very young age the same lessons of mistrust and survival by the gun. “Cause they can’t seem to find a place they think we belong,” the girls tell us. “So they got us set up in hardship in ghettos to do wrong. Enrage us. Teach us nothing. Then encage us.”

“When will it stop?” the girls ask and I found myself drowning in this question. When our obsession with guns runs so deep and is based on centuries of firmly rooted racism, fear and greed how can we overcome it? Is there hope for us? It occurred to me during the talkback after the performance that perhaps these young women – and others like them – ARE our hope. When others around them are falling prey to the life described above, these girls are refusing to become statistics. They are not joining gangs or getting pregnant, but are finishing school and going to college. And now they are using their experiences to educate others about this issue that is so close to them. They have plans to take the play into schools and to tour the country in order to share their message with as many people as possible. The philosophy of Girl be Heard asserts, “If a girl can change her own life, she can change the lives of girls everywhere.” It is my belief that these women and this play they have so courageously written can potentially change the lives not only of girls, but of people everywhere. “This is a call to action to stop gun violence” they tell us at the play’s conclusion. “Stand up with us now and help us fight for this cause.” I, for one, intend to stand with them.

Dawn Slegona McDonald is a teaching artist and mom based in Brooklyn, NY. She is an active member of the NY/Greater NYC chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Visit momsdemandaction.org for more details.

99mm America is playing now as part of the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity. Robert Moss Theatre, 440 Lafayette St, New York, NY

 Remaining performances:

Friday June 7^th at 4:30pm

Sunday June 9^th at 5:00pm

Wednesday June 19^th at 8:00pm

 Tickets are $18. Purchase at PlanetConnections.org or call (866) 811-4111. To learn more about Girl Be Heard visit girlbeheard.org

A few years ago someone very close and dear to me lost a parent. The loss, as any loss is, was not only hard for that someone, but for those close to the family. The deceased was not only well-loved but well-respected. A true role model and mentor. They were very passionate about their craft and I felt very blessed to have been able to receive much advice. That spirit of love and caring is carried on by my dear friend. However, here’s what was interesting. I was able to simultaneously be supportive yet step back and observe during the funeral and after. The reactions and sentiments were a bit harsh and self-centered. I remember being appalled at how some weren’t supportive of those who had to live with this loss. There was a strange outpouring of me-me-me to the living. Never once consoling. There was also the craziest things being said that was so inappropriate. Though, it is not up to me to tell anyone how to grieve, my friend sent me this article that would have been beneficial YEARS ago.

How not to say the wrong thing